The price of a life-saving overdose treatment has increased 680% to $4,500 in the last 3 years

pulse

February 3, 2017 10:46 PM

An emergency medication often referred to as an "antidote" for opioid overdoses has been skyrocketing in price over the last few years.

Jennifer Stepp (L) and her daughter Audrey, 8, teach a Naloxone training class for children and adults on how to save lives by injecting Naloxone into people suffering opioid overdoses at the Hillview Community Center in Louisville, Kentucky, November 21, 2015.

The device, the only auto-injector version of naloxone, is called Evzio, and it's made by Kaleo.

In 2014, when Evzio was approved in the US, the list price was $575 for a two-pack. Now, it has a list price of $4,500 — an increase of 680%.

Kaleo, a private company based in Richmond, Virginia, also owns Auvi-Q, the emergency epinephrine device that made headlines in October 2016 when the company announced it would come back to the US as competition to the EpiPen after getting recalled a year earlier. The Auvi-Q and Evzio use the same auto-injector technology to deliver their respective emergency medications.

The list price for a two-pack of the Auvi-Q comes in at $4,500 as well, though the company maintains that the cash price for people without insurance is $360 and that more than 200 million people will be able to get the device with a $0 copay. That list price is roughly 640% higher than the list price of the EpiPen, which was singled out in August 2016 for increasing the price of a two-pack by 500% over the course of seven years.

Now, the list prices of the two drugs is catching the eye of Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who sent a letter Friday to Kaleo asking for more information about the company's pricing strategy.

List prices don't often tell the whole story when it comes to a drug's price. T

This isn't the first time rising naloxone prices have been called out. Until recently, Evzio's price had been $3,750 per two-pack. And across the board, naloxone prices have been skyrocketing, as Business Insider's Harrison Jacobs has reported.

However, most other naloxone options — syringes, and a nasal spray — have list prices in the hundreds for sets of 10 vials or two nose sprays. As a proportion of total naloxone market, Evzio made up roughly a third of prescriptions in 2016, according to data from IMS Health.

It remains to be seen how many prescriptions transfer from the EpiPen to the Auvi-Q. Before it was recalled, Auvi-Q only had a small share of the market at a list price of around $500.

But its high list price is already turning off health insurers and pharmacy benefits managers. FiercePharma reports that Cigna, Humana, and the pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts have come out against the pricing strategy for Auvi-Q, while Aetna is putting it on restricted coverage. The device officially launches in the US on February 14.

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